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Senior Hat Day

Did you ever cheat on a test? Now, be honest, did you? Well, I did, more than once, but I have to tell you about the time we seniors cheated on a Anatomy test.

I finally made it to my senior year at North Marshall High School and we all pretty much planned to coast our way through that last year. I mean, you would have really had to put forth a real effort to fail anyway. There were a lot of things that we did that year as a farewell to our last 12 years of school. We were gonna be moving on to college, the armed forces or going straight to work. So, we had to do some fun things before we left.

One of the fun things we did was to have a Senior Hat Day when only the seniors would wear hats to school. No one else would be allowed to do this. I think I borrowed one of my grandmother’s old hats that she wore when she worked in the garden.

Anyway, we all made it to school with our goofy looking hats. It just so happened that those of us who were taking Anatomy were also going to be taking a test that day. I hate to say it, but I had not even looked at the book or my notes so I had no idea what the test was about or how I was going to pass that puppy. I don’t remember how it all happened, but there we sat taking that test and it just seemed like a good idea to sort of pull the hat down and peek at the paper of the person sitting next to me. Well, that was easy so I just kept right on peeking until I finished the test and turned it in to the teacher. What I didn’t know was that several other seniors had the same idea that I did and they all did a little peeking themselves. Besides, the teacher couldn’t see us cheating because of our hats. Right? I have to add here that we had a great Anatomy teacher; he was also the basketball coach and several of us went to the same church as he and his family.

In a couple of days, he told the class that he had our test papers all graded, but before he handed them out, he wanted to let us know that he had seen quite a few people cheating on this test. He also told us that if our grade was circled, that meant he had caught us cheating. Oh geez, he did see us. This was not good news.

But, of course my test grade was circled and so were half the people in the room – well the seniors at least. So, he decided that he would give us a choice of the punishment for cheating – either write “I will not cheat on my Anatomy test” a gazillion times or take three licks from the paddle. I’m not sure if I’ve told you this, but I was warned back in grade school that if I got a paddling at school, I could pretty well expect one when I got home. Getting a paddling at school would be nothing compared to the whipping I would get from my mother, so the thought of three licks did not appeal to me. However, we seniors kind of talked about it amongst ourselves and all came to the conclusion that we would take the three licks. As it turned out, he barely touched us with the paddle.

After we had taken our licks, he started laughing and said he couldn’t understand how any of us could turn our heads at all from the way we all twisted and leaned over to cheat off our neighbors. He got a real kick out of watching us and was never angry with us at all. But he did get the last laugh.

So, Senior Hat Day was a memorable day for all of us, especially the ones of us who happened to take that Anatomy test.